trudge

Mid-16th century. Original meaning was somewhat idiomatic, meaning "to walk using snowshoes." Probably of Scandinavian origin, compare Icelandic þrúga (“snowshoe”), Norwegian truga (“snowshoe”) and dialectal Swedish trudja (“snowshoe”).

• (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA^(key): /tɹʌd͡ʒ/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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• Rhymes: -ʌd͡ʒ

trudge (plural trudges)

1. A tramp, i.e. a long and tiring walk.
   • 2020 September 9, Paul Clifton, “Heavy rainfall causes landslip in Hampshire: At the scene...”, in Rail, page 10:

     The morning after the landslip, with rain still pouring down, it was an unpleasant trudge through deep mud to get there.

trudge (third-person singular simple present trudges, present participle trudging, simple past and past participle trudged)

1. (intransitive) To walk wearily with heavy, slow steps.
   • 2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)[1]

     This famous archaeological site marks the farthest limit of human migration out of Africa in the middle Stone Age—the outer edge of our knowledge of the cosmos. I trudge to the caves in a squall.

2. (transitive) To trudge along or over a route etc.

• trudger

• “trudge” in Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary: Based on Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 7th edition, Springfield, Mass.: G[eorge] & C[harles] Merriam, 1963 (1967 printing), →OCLC.
• “trudge”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.